The present invention relates to disc drive data storage devices. In particular the present invention relates to cleaning discs and wafers used in making disc drives.
In disc drive storage devices, as well as other technologically advanced devices such as LCD plates, there are surfaces that include micromechanical structures at or near the surfaces that are subject to damage. For example, discs have a thin layer of magnetic material at a sliding disc surface and read/write heads have various magnetic and insulating components formed at a sliding head surface. When particles adhere to the sliding surfaces, the particles can be broken loose by the sliding action and damage delicate micromechanical structures on one or both sliding surfaces.
Cleaning techniques are available for effectively removing larger particles. For example, burnish heads, ultrasonic and megasonic cleaning have been used. However, burnish heads can break up particles into smaller particles which also adhere to the sliding surface. Ultrasonic or megasonic cleaning would have to use unacceptable amounts of power in order to get high enough pressure gradients to remove small particles. As areal densities of disc drives increase, the critical dimension between sliding components is becoming smaller and approaching 5 nanometers in some applications. A method and apparatus are needed that can clean extremely small particles from micromechanical sliding surfaces without damaging the micromechanical structures that are at or near the sliding surfaces during the cleaning process.
Disclosed is a method and an apparatus adapted to clean an exposed surface of a microstructure device such as a disc or head for a disc drive. The apparatus includes a fixture with a mounting surface adapted to receive the microstructure device. A cleaning fluid covers the exposed surface.
A slider bearing coupled to a resilient mount flies over the exposed surface. A cleaning line on the exposed surface adjacent the slider bearing is subject to a flow of the cleaning fluid. The flow can be generated by relative motion between the microstructure device and the slider bearing or generated by a nozzle.
Additional features and benefits will become appararent with a careful review of the following detailed description and the corresponding drawings.